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Protista Questions

(Answers at bottom of page- way down)

A. On a global basis, protists are particularly important components of which of the following habitats?

  1. marine
  2. freshwater
  3. within the bodies of other organisms
  4. damp soil

B. Kelps are brown algae that grow in the ocean. The main importance of the kelps in marine habitats is/are

  1. they produce most of the biomass in the open ocean
  2. they produce most of the oxygen in the atmosphere
  3. they provide food and shelter in cool coastal ecosystems
  4. they are the closest relatives of the land plants
  5. they lack chlorophyll, therefore they are not green in color

C. Protists are ecologically and evolutionarily significant. Which of the following is NOT true?

  1. multicellular kingdoms evolved from protists
  2. photosynthetic protists are major producer organisms globally
  3. protists are not parasitic
  4. protists are important decomposer organisms in many ecosystems
  5. many protists have highly differentiated bodies, even producing tissues

D. According to current phylogenetic hypotheses, the Protista

  1. are a monophyletic group
  2. are not monophyletic group
  3. obtained their chloroplasts through endosymbiosis of a green algal cell
  4. obtained their chloroplasts in two independent endosymbiotic events

E. Phyla, or divisions, of photosynthetic protista differ from each other in all EXCEPT which of the following features:

  1. type of flagella
  2. types of chlorophyll
  3. types of food storage chemicals
  4. types of cell wall construction
  5. types of complex gametangia produced

F. If you found a green, photosynthetic, multicellular organism and you had only one characteristic that you could look for to determine whether it was a plant (Kingdom Plantae) instead of a protist (Kingdom Protista), what one feature would be the most definitive plant characteristic?

  1. presence of chlorophylls a and b
  2. presence of a cellulose wall
  3. presence of an embryo
  4. presence of starch
  5. absence of flagella

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Answers: A1, B3, C3, D2, E5, F3

modified 1/24/04